Noam Chomsky

It is quite possible-overwhelmingly probable, one might guess-that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology

Under Obama, the [Democratic] party was reduced to shambles at the local and state level, a particularly serious matter because the 2020 elections will determine redistricting, offering opportunities for gerrymandering even beyond today’s scandalous situation.

Like, say I can choose to buy a Toyota or a Chevrolet, but I can’t choose in a market system to get a subway system, that is a collective action. Market systems don’t allow that. So it has an enormous distorting effect on the choices that are available.

Nothing is sincere….But…[liberals] should be praising [Trump] for [reducing tensions with Russia and sensible Korean denuclearization] and supporting it, but instead, the liberals are so insane that they’re attacking him for the few things he’s doing which makes sense.

…if you want to be praised and have your books reviewed and told how brilliant you are and get great jobs, it’s not advisable to be a dissident. It’s not impossible, and in fact the system has enough looseness in it so that it can be done, but it is not easy.

Reparations – not just aid – should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and – together with other criminal states – for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.

Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.

Well, I’m telling them two things. One is that, look, this is going to be something when the American people realize – once it’s passed – that, A, it does take care of preexisting conditions; B, you’re insurance rates aren’t going to skyrocket; C, the insurance companies aren’t going to be running the show like they were before; D, you’re going to be in a position where you can keep your insurance that you have. That once the American public realizes that, you’re going to get a reward for this. They’re going to be rewarded.

The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability – that threat is real.

Edward Bernays’ next famous achievement was Guatemala. He took over, at the request of the United Fruit Company, public relations activities to try to lay the basis for the U.S.-backed invasion, which destroyed an experiment in Guatemalan democracy…

Anarcho-syndicalism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, that they ought to control the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations…

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.

Well, the Washington consensus – which is basically designed for the Third World to make it that way, and keep it that way – it’s now being applied not just to the Third World countries, but to the rich industrial societies, with the United States and Britain in the lead.

My parents told me that children were taken from their families in 1941, and my mother had a child taken from her – with the goal of saving him.

See that the President, the Cabinet and staff are informed. If cut out of the information flow, their decisions may be poor, not made, or not confidently or persuasively implemented.

Of all the treasures a state can possess, the human lives of its citizens are for us the most precious.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’

By May, 1st, 1937, there should not be one single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes.

Well, if I ever ran for office, I’d do better as a Democrat than as a Republican – and that’s not because I’d be more liberal, because I’m conservative. But the working guy would elect me. He likes me. When I walk down the street, those cabbies start yelling out their windows.

Everywhere the Europeans went, whether it was the Portuguese or the Spanish or the English or the Dutch, they fought with a level of violence which appalled the natives. They had never seen anything like it. That was true virtually over the entire world, with very few exceptions.